


Bang

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Series: Whumptober 2019 [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bombs, Crying, Explosives, Gen, I Made Myself Cry, Mentioned Batfamily (DCU), One (1) f-bomb (warranted), Rated For Violence, Whump, Whumptober, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 03:23:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20885318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: Jason crouched on the roof of an emptied office building and watched the bank across the street. It was as abandoned now as the building beneath him, the entire block swept up and deposited well out of the potential blast zone. He kept his attention on the bank and its hidden but deadly payload and listened in on the chatter in his earpiece.Jason wasn’t normally a keep-tabs person, but explosions made him nervous.





	Bang

There was a bomb in the school. And the rec center. The Grove Street bank. The post office on Utica. The Nockaphee Building. The newly opened inner city hospital.

Bombs all over Gotham, embedded in the spines of community spaces and corporate structures like ticking tumors.

It was all hands on deck. Gotham PD had emptied out, as had the fire department, emergency services, and every mask within state limits. Batman and Black Bat had bypassed evacuation to head straight to the source. Stop the bomber, stop the bomb. The rest of them were merely backup, protection in case the caped pair failed. Their job was evacuation. Get everyone out and keep them away. Every time they were given a new location, a segment of the core broke off until their forces were scattered wide across the city.

Jason crouched on the roof of an emptied office building and watched the bank across the street. It was as abandoned now as the building beneath him, the entire block swept up and deposited well out of the potential blast zone. He kept his attention on the bank and its hidden but deadly payload and listened in on the crosstalk in his earpiece.

Familiar voices interspersed official chatter. He could hear dispatchers for the different departments, Red Robin calling out orders to the civilians in his care, Oracle’s terse, effective updates, and Spoiler cracking a joke to the kid she had just handed back to his mother. His earpiece cycled between the channels on loop, just enough to keep tabs.

Jason wasn’t normally a keep-tabs person, but explosions made him nervous.

He didn’t add his own voice to the channel. After confirming that civilians were clear of the area, his part in the evening was mostly done. The night, for him, was about monitoring and vigilance and fantasizing about bashing the bomb maker’s face in.

As far as city-wide disasters went, this one wasn’t so bad. Batman had caught wind of the plot early and whipped the city into action well before the bomb maker was prepared to go live, which meant there was no cliched ticking countdown. There were still people in danger—too many people—but that number was decreasing by the minute as the teams swept the city. The one moment of potential disaster—the bomb tucked into the belly of the rec center had malfunctioned and gone off on its own—had resulted only in property damage and no loss of life. The bomb maker hadn’t even set them all to run independently but instead had retained control via a mechanism that turned deliberate detonation into an all-or-nothing deal. All Batman had to do was incapacitate the bomb maker and turn off the controls. Night over, everyone pack it up and go home.

The first sign of trouble was the low “hrnn” over Jason’s earpiece. Batman had many different kinds of grunts, ranging from acknowledgement to dismissal to something almost close to happy. Jason wasn’t fluent in all of them—and had done his best to forget most of them—but he knew that a “hrnn,” unlike a “hnn” or a “mm,” was not a good sign.

“Batman?”

Normally, it would be Nightwing’s job to nudge Batman into using his big boy words, but Officer Grayson had been on duty when the emergency alarm rang. A discreet earpiece of his own allowed him to listen in, but speaking was out of the question. Oracle took the lead instead.

“There’s no off switch.”

That wasn’t a huge problem. No off switch was pretty much par for the course for losers like this guy. And it wasn’t like Batman had never defused a bomb before.

“I may have triggered something.”

That made Jason shift his position a little.

“Triggered ‘something’?” Spoiler interjected, air quotes as tangible as if she had been standing there in the flesh crooking her fingers.

“Countdown,” Black Bat replied after a pause.

“How long?” Oracle demanded.

“Ten minutes.”

Batman’s voice was clipped now in a way it hadn’t been before. That wasn’t good. Ten minutes was usually plenty of time. Ten minutes left enough time to defuse the bomb, make a sandwich, and maybe take a light nap.

The others must have heard the same thing, because Robin chimed in with a tight, “Batman?”

“Oracle, pull everyone back another five hundred yards.” Oracle was making the calls even before the explanation came over the line. “Plans here show multiple bombs per location. Overkill. And the mechanism is sophisticated.”

Translation: Bigger boom than expected, and Batman was having trouble turning it off.

Jason scrambled back across the blacktop roof. He could hear the emergency personnel one street over giving orders through a megaphone, Oracle’s alert already rippling out in the real world. He had just cleared the divide between his lookout roof and the next when his earpiece clicked twice. A request to switch to a private channel. Or a command, depending on how you looked at it.

Jason switched over, expecting Oracle or maybe even Batman.

“Yeah?”

Silence. Jason frowned. “Hello?”

On the other end, someone sucked in a shaky breath.

“Who is this?” The words shot out sharp and gleaming, propelled by Jason’s mounting concern.

“I think I have made a tactical error.”

Jason’s assumptions staggered, then abruptly took a nosedive. “Robin?”

Bad. This was going to be bad, whatever it was. They weren’t mortal enemies anymore, but Jason and Robin didn’t talk. Not on private channels. Not with confessions right off the bat.

Robin coughed, and it sounded strained.

Jason leaped to the next building and ducked down, pressing his back against the low retention wall.

“Robin, report.” He was no Batman, but Jason could bark a command with the best of them.

“I-I have injured my leg. And two ribs, possibly three.”

Okay. Okay. He was expecting worse. Jason scowled. “So find an EMT. You’re with the Third Street group, right?”

“I was,” Red Robin rasped. “They said there were civilians in the basement.”

Beneath his leather jacket, the hair on Jason’s arms rose. “What basement?” But he knew.

“The recreation center.” The connection tightened with a hiccup from Robin. “There were people getting field equipment, or supposed to be.”

The rec center, where Robin and the Third Street group had been sent to evacuate the grounds. The rec center, where the bomb had gone off. The rec center, where Robin had checked in and said he was fine _after_ the bomb had gone off.

“You said you were out!” Jason spat. “So, what, you hung around, got your meat blown to bits, and now you can’t find an EMT because you left _the entire group of trained staff you were with?_”

Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. This was why Jason refused to be affiliated with these people. They were all idiots.

“I didn’t want Batman to worry.”

Yeah, because Batman wasn’t a grown adult who couldn’t handle his own crap. Obviously. So the little gremlin had lied about where he was, concealed an injury, and now was calling Hood like his own personal Uber. 

And Jason was going to let him, because he was also an idiot, apparently.

“You’re a brat, you know that?” Jason growled as he hauled himself to his feet again. “Fine. Fine! Where are you?”

His area was well clear. They wouldn’t miss him if he popped downtown.

Robin’s answer was a whisper. “In the basement of the rec center.”

Jason stopped walking. “_In_ the basement. Of the rec center.”

The building that had already been damaged by a faulty explosive. The building that, according to Batman, held several other bombs set to detonate in—Jason looked down at his watch—seven minutes and forty-three seconds.

Jason began to run. “Can you move? I’ll call Oracle. She can route—“

“No.” Robin cut in hard, then grunted as if shifting his position. “I am trapped. Anyone who comes in after me will be put in mortal peril.”

“Then you have to get out.” Jason was jumping from rail to rail on the fire escape, swinging out on the bars to drop down with a clang. He had to get to his bike.

“There was debris after the explosion.” Red sucked in another breath. “The shelving units fell on me. I extricated myself, but something is blocking the doors. I can’t—I am—I made it to the supply closet.”

It wouldn’t be enough. There were at least two more devices hidden in the rec center, maybe more. If they were of the same caliber as the first and placed with the same strategic positioning, it wouldn’t matter how structurally sound Robin’s chosen space was.

“You have to call Barbara.” Damian muttered something about code names, but Jason ignored him. They were past that. “You have to let someone know. Call Babs, call Bruce—“

“No,” Damian cut in. “The one thing that could save me is Batman defusing the bombs. I can’t distract him from that.”

“If you hadn’t _lied_ about being out—“

“People were in danger.”

“YOU were in danger!” Jason was breathing curses like fumes as he reached the street level and took off in a sprint for his motorcycle. His mind was tumbling end over end, trying to find a solution. Less than five minutes now.

“I’m coming,” he promised even as he leapt onto his bike. “I’m coming, I’m two minutes away, just hang on.”

More like four, if he pushed his bike to the limit. It was still enough time. It had to be enough time.

“Todd.” Though breathless, Damian’s voice was soft, stripped of its usual posturing and venom. “I don’t expect you to save me. Either Father will stop the countdown or he won’t.”

“Then why the fuck did you call?” Jason snarled and cut the corner so sharply that his rim nearly scraped the asphalt.

“I wanted to know if it hurt.”

The words were nearly lost beneath the roar of the bike, but Jason felt like he’d been hit with a… He choked back bile and managed a strangled, “What?”

“In Ethiopia,” Damian said, speaking words no one had dared say in all the months Jason had been back. “When the warehouse exploded. Did it hurt? I just… I would rather not speculate. I would rather know.”

This wasn’t happening. He’d just seen the kid a couple hours ago. They’d nodded while passing to their own teams. He’d left a movie about a dog on Jason’s windowsill last week.

He was two minutes away. The bomb would go off in three.

“You’re not going to die,” Jason said, making promises he’d swore he’d never give. “If you were, you’d be calling Dick, not me.”

“Richard can’t talk. And Richard hasn’t died.” Another cough, this one hard enough to make Jason wince behind his mask. “Todd, please. I’m scared and I need to know.”

He was scared. Of course he was scared. He was trapped in a building rigged to blow, and he was just a kid. It knocked the wind from his lungs, how young Damian sounded. Jason had always seen him as a pest, a tolerable nuisance at best and just like his grandfather at worst. He was a Bat, wicked smart, trained by the best. But he was just a kid.

Jason couldn’t lie, not even to a little kid.

“Yeah,” he rasped. “It hurt.”

It had hurt to the point beyond pain, like every cell, every molecule, every atom had been lit up like a Christmas tree. There hadn’t been a single point of him that hadn’t screamed at the end.

“But it happens fast,” Jason continued around the lump in his throat, “and once it’s over, it’s over.”

“Oh.” Robin’s swallow was audible. “Well. That is… At least I know. Thank you.”

“Don’t.” Jason had meant to use his Batman voice, low and commanding and unbreakable. But his throat betrayed him, squeezing shut in the middle. “Don’t thank me. You’ll make it weird, and then I’ll feel bad when I have to kill you after saving your behind."

He should switch over, call Babs or Dick or Bruce. Heck, blast a message on every frequency available, let someone know Robin was trapped in a basement and surrounded by bombs, could someone please go save the kid? He might have done it, knowing full well that all were too far away to help, that there was nothing to be done short of defusing the bomb in the seconds left, except that Damian spoke before he could.

“Don’t hang up.” The words were rushed and tight, as if forced through clenched teeth. “Please.”

_Don’t say please to me. Don’t say thank you. Don’t say things that you only say because you think you’re about to die._

Jason’s bike roared down a flight of concrete stairs and across a deserted sidewalk, eating up the distance by the second. He had to swallow hard before speaking over the howl of the wind.

“I told you, brat, I’m coming. I’m not going anywhere. But I could patch Dick in—“

“No.” No matter how Jason tried, it was impossible to miss the tears in the boy’s voice now. “It would kill him, having to listen. And he’ll be so angry. I cannot—I-I cannot die knowing he’s angry with me. Please don’t call Richard.”

“Okay, okay, I won’t,” Jason breathed. He could see the rec center down the road.

The bombs would detonate in one minute and three seconds.

“But kid, you should have someone—I’m not—Please, at least Steph or Alfred or even Tim. _Someone_.”

Someone this kid felt safe with. Someone he loved. Jason had had no one at all, and he didn’t want that for Damian.

“I have you,” Damian croaked. “You understand. You can tell them. Tell them I-I’m sorry. And that I was brave?”

His voice swung up at the end, squeaking with strain, like it was a question, like it was ever in doubt.

Forty seconds.

Jason leapt from his bike, let it fall to the asphalt with a crash as he sprinted toward the building.

“You’ll tell them yourself, kid,” Jason breathed. “You have time. You’re not dead yet. Bruce is working on it, and I’m _coming_.”

“No—Todd! You can’t come in here!” There was a clatter in the background, like Damian had sat up in the closet and knocked over supplies. “If you die again, it will destroy Father.”

“Like losing you won’t,” Jason snapped. “Shut up.”

Thirty seconds.

He barreled through the ajar side door and raced to the still-intact stairwell, the skin between his shoulder blades prickling. It would be different this time, he told himself. There was no crowbar this time, no despair over Sheila, no guilt over having been so stupid. Just a flash of pain and that would be it. And who knew, maybe this time Bruce would pull through.

Jason cleared the stairwell, slowing only slightly to duck under the sagging ceiling and pick his way through the debris-strewn hallway. The door at the end of the hallway was blocked, the ceiling before it collapsing inward to form a thicket of concrete and rebar.

Ten seconds.

Jason lunged at the barrier, roaring as he tore aside mountains with his hands.

Nine.

“Jason?” Damian gasped over the earpiece. “I don’t want it to hurt. I don’t want it to hurt.”

Eight.

“I’m here!” Jason yelled, trying to be heard through the door as well as through the earpiece.

“No! No, no, no, you have to stay with Father! You have to help Richard!”

Seven.

Jason cried out, straining to pry open the door.

Six.

He opened up enough of a gap and wedged himself inside, panting and wriggling until he could stagger into the equipment area.

Five.

“DAMIAN!” Where _was_ he?

Four.

Damian was raging into his ear, sobs at last mingling with curses and commands.

Three.

Jason’s world shrunk to the narrow door in the corner of the room. He flung himself forward and yanked it open.

Two.

Damian sat curled on the floor, awash in blood, snot, and tears. He looked up at Jason, green eyes so wide the whites flashed.

One.

Jason threw himself into the closet and shut the door.

**Author's Note:**

> So technically the characters listed factor in, but they were sort of just a screen for who I planned to have trapped with the bomb. I couldn't relinquish the suspense. My bad?
> 
> (ETA: Some of you seem to be missing that I added a follow-up. Hit the next in series button.)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Waking Alone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20917058) by [woodenwashbucket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodenwashbucket/pseuds/woodenwashbucket)


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